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13 poets born in November, some
famed in their native land, some
known round the world, but all
with something to say about
the human condition here on
Earth, our one and only planet.
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November 16
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1807 – Jónas Hallgrímsson born in Öxnadalur, Iceland; Icelandic poet, author, geologist, naturalist, translator, and co-founder of the Icelandic journal, Fjölnir, first published in 1835, which advocated for the Icelandic Independence Movement (Iceland won limited home rule and a constitution from Denmark in 1874, and autonomy through the Danish-Icelandic Act of Union in 1918, and severed all ties in 1944). At the age of just 37, Hallgrímsson died from blood poisoning following breaking his leg in May, 1845. Since 1996, his birthday has been honored in Iceland as Day of the Icelandic Tongue.
Drugery
by Jónas Hallgrímsson
.
The sun climbs
from cool streams
of eastern seas
to oust the night.
What long drudgery
for a light-bringer —
unpacking this foolish
planet from darkness!
.
Sun! while your bright
beams are conquering
half of the world
in heaven’s service,
loosing legions
of light everywhere —
in the east the night
always pursues you.
.
Sturdy Sisyphus
strains at his rock,
the Danaids’ jar
drips forever,
and earth whirls herself
endlessly
out of light
and into darkness.
.
“Drugery” from Bard of Iceland: Jónas Hallgrímsson, translation © 2002 by Dick Ringler – University of Wisconsin Press
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1944 – Wong May born in Chongqing, China; Chinese-Irish poet, painter, and translator. Her mother was a classical Chinese poet and scholar. They moved in 1950 to Singapore, where Wong May grew up. She earned a BA in English Literature from the University of Singapore in 1965. She had gained dual citizenship, but relinquished her Singaporean citizenship when Singapore stopped allowing dual citizenship. In 1966, she began studies at the Writer’s Workshop, and earned a Master of Fine Arts degree from the University of Iowa in 1968. Her first poetry collection, A Bad Girl’s Book of Animals, was published in 1969. In 1972, she married Michael Coey, Professor of Physics at Trinty College, Dublin, who died in 2025. Her poetry collections include: Wannsee Poems; Superstitions; and Picasso's Tears. In 2022, her book In the Same Light: 200 Tang Poems for Our Century won that year’s Windham-Campbell Literature Prize for poetry. She still lives and works in Dublin, Ireland.
IN MEMORIAM
(Martin Luther King, Spring 1968)
by Wong May
.
And if you come to my party
I will come to yours
.
There will always be parties
and poetry
.
Evening comes soft and grey like
a gracious hostess
.
somewhere she dances
for St. John the Baptist
his head
.
Listen: I am not sick
You are not sick
.
the in-patients are indoors
the out-patients are outdoors
.
the world is not sick
.
After a few martinis
people with glasses in their hands
touch each other
imagine blood
.
Spring is here
in April
as always
.
Assassins spring up everywhere like prophets
.
Donations
Donations
.
What is the occasion?
Did someone drive into the cows?
.
Some white men
Imagine they are in Africa.
.
Listen
if you listen carefully for long you will hear nothing
.
they want peace
.
it’s catkins falling off willow trees
.
“IN MEMORIAM” from Reports, © 1972 by Wong May - Harcourt Brace Jovanovich
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November 17
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1866 - Voltairine de Cleyre born in Leslie, Michigan; American anarchist, Freethought Movement activist, prolific writer, poet, and public speaker. She opposed capitalism, the state, marriage, and domination over women’s lives and sexuality by religion. In 1912, she died at age 45 from septic meningitis. De Cleyre was a contemporary of Emma Goldman, with whom she maintained a relationship of respectful disagreement on several issues. Many of de Cleyre’s essays were collected in the Selected Works of Voltairine de Cleyre, published posthumously by Goldman’s magazine Mother Earth in 1914.
UT SEMENTEM FECERIS, ITA METES
(As you sow, so shall you reap)
.
by Voltairine de Cleyre
.
(To the Czar, on a woman, a political prisoner, being flogged to death in Siberia)
.
How many drops must gather to the skies
Before the cloud-burst comes, we may not know;
How hot the fires in under hells must glow
.
Ere the volcano’s scalding lavas rise,
Can none say, but all wot the hour is sure!
Who dreams of vengeance has but to endure!
.
He may not say how many blows must fall,
How many lives be broken on the wheel,
.
How many corpses stiffen ‘neath the pall,
How many martyrs fix the blood-red seal;
.
But certain is the harvest time of Hate!
And when weak moans, by an indignant world
.
Re-echoed, to a throne are backward hurled,
Who listens hears the mutterings of Fate!
.
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1930 – Elizabeth Cook-Lynn born on the Crow Creek Reservation in South Dakota; she is a Dakota and member of the Crow Creek Sioux Tribe. Cook-Lynn is an editor, essayist, poet, novelist, nonfiction author, and an advocate for tribal sovereignty. Her great-grandfather was a Native linguist and pioneer of early Dakota-language dictionaries, both her grandfather and father were on the Crow Creek Sioux Tribal Council, and her grandmother wrote articles in English and Dakota for Christian newspapers. Cook-Lynn earned a BA in English and Journalism from South Dakota State College, then did graduate work at New Mexico State University and Black Hills State College, and completed her doctorate at University of Nebraska in 1978. In 1985 Cook-Lynn co-founded Wíčazo Ša Review (Red Pencil), an academic journal devoted to Native American studies as an academic discipline. The other founding editors were Beatrice Medicine, Roger Buffalohead, and William Willard. Her books include Why I Can’t Read Wallace Stegner and Other Essays: A Tribal Voice; Notebooks of Cook-Lynn, a mixed poetry and prose collection; and I Remember the Fallen Trees: New and Selected Poems.
Mount Rushmore
by Elizabeth Cook-Lynn
.
Owls hang in the night air
between the visages of Washington, Lincoln
The Rough Rider, and Jefferson; and coyotes
mourn the theft of sacred ground.
.
A cenotaph becomes the tourist temple
of the profane.
.
“Mount Rushmore” from Seek the House of Relatives, © 1983 by Elizabeth Cook-Lynn – Blue Cloud Quarterly Press
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November 18
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1939 – Margaret Atwood born in Ottawa, Canada ; Canadian author, poet, critic, feminist, animal rights and environmental activist, and inventor; among her 16 novels to date, she best known for her iconic novel, The Handmaid’s Tale, which won the Arthur C. Clarke Award; and The Blind Assassin, winner of the Man Booker Prize. The Testaments, Atwood’s sequel to The Handmaid’s Tale, was a co-winner with Bernardine Evaristo’s Girl, Woman, Other of the 2019 Booker Prize. Her poetry collections include Double Persephone; The Circle Game; Are You Happy; Interlunar; Morning in the Burned House; and Dearly.
Spelling
by Margaret Atwood
.
My daughter plays on the floor
with plastic letters,
red, blue & hard yellow,
learning how to spell,
spelling,
how to make spells.
.
I wonder how many women
denied themselves daughters,
closed themselves in rooms,
drew the curtains
so they could mainline words.
.
A child is not a poem,
a poem is not a child.
There is no either / or.
However.
.
I return to the story
of the woman caught in the war
& in labour, her thighs tied
together by the enemy
so she could not give birth.
Ancestress: the burning witch,
her mouth covered by leather
to strangle words.
A word after a word
after a word is power.
.
At the point where language falls away
from the hot bones, at the point
where the rock breaks open and darkness
flows out of it like blood, at
the melting point of granite
when the bones know
they are hollow & the word
splits & doubles & speaks
the truth & the body
itself becomes a mouth.
This is a metaphor.
.
How do you learn to spell?
Blood, sky & the sun,
your own name first,
your first naming, your first name,
your first word.
.
“Spelling” from True Stories, © 1981 by Margaret Atwood – Oxford University Press
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November 19
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1942 – Sharon Olds born in San Francisco, CA ; American poet who won the 2013 Pulitzer Prize in Poetry for Stag’s Leap, and the 1984 National Book Critics Circle Award in Poetry for The Dead and the Living. She teaches creative writing at New York University. While not initially involved the Women’s Movement in the late 1960s, a time when she was married and had her first child, the movement did cause her to realize that “I had never questioned that men had all the important jobs. And that was shocking …” When Olds first sent her poetry to a magazine in the 1970s, the reply was: “This is a literary magazine. If you wish to write about this sort of subject, may we suggest the Ladies’ Home Journal. The true subjects of poetry are … male subjects, not your children.” She published her first collection, Satan Says, in 1980 when she was 37 years old. Since then, she has published more collections, including Blood, Tin, Straw; The Unswept Room; Arias; and Balladz. In 2005, she declined an invitation from First Lady Laura Bush to the National Book Festival, in an open letter published in The Nation, “So many Americans who had felt pride in our country now feel anguish and shame for the current regime of blood, wounds and fire. I thought of the clean linens at your table, the shining knives and the flames of the candles, and I could not stomach it.”
First Thanksgiving
by Sharon Olds
.
When she comes back, from college, I will see
the skin of her upper arms, cool,
matte, glossy. She will hug me, my old
soupy chest against her breasts,
I will smell her hair! She will sleep in this apartment,
her sleep like an untamed, good object,
like a soul in a body. She came into my life the
second great arrival, after him, fresh
from the other world—which lay, from within him,
within me. Those nights, I fed her to sleep,
week after week, the moon rising,
and setting, and waxing—whirling, over the months,
in a slow blur, around our planet.
Now she doesn’t need love like that, she has
had it. She will walk in glowing, we will talk,
and then, when she’s fast asleep, I’ll exult
to have her in that room again,
behind that door! As a child, I caught
bees, by the wings, and held them, some seconds,
looked into their wild faces,
listened to them sing, then tossed them back
into the air—I remember the moment the
arc of my toss swerved, and they entered
the corrected curve of their departure.
.
“First Thanksgiving” from Strike Sparks: Selected Poems 1980-2002, © 2004 by Sharon Olds – Alfred A. Knopf
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November 20
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1910 – Pauli Murray born in Baltimore, Maryland; Black American civil and women’s rights activist, lawyer, and author. Orphaned very young, she was raised by her maternal grandparents in Durham, North Carolina. At 16, she went to Hunter College in New York, earning a BA in English in 1933. During the Depression, she worked for the Civilian Conservation Corps at an all-woman camp founded but Murray later clashed with the camp’s director after he found a Marxist book among her belongings, and he disapproved of her relationship with Peg Holmes, a white counselor. They both left the camp in 1935, and traveled the country on foot, hitching rides and hopping freight trains, before finding work – Murray with the YWCA. In 1940, Murray was arrested for sitting in the whites-only section of a Virginia bus. After this incident, and her involvement with the socialist Workers’ Defense League, Murray enrolled in the law school at Howard University after being denied entry to the University of North Carolina because of her race. At Howard, her awareness of sexism increased, which she called “Jane Crow.” She graduated first in her class, but was denied entry to Harvard for post-graduate work because of her gender. In 1964, she delivered her speech “Jim Crow and Jane Crow” in Washington DC. After earning her masters at the University of California, Berkeley, in 1965 she was the first African American with a Doctor of Juridical Science degree from Yale Law School. As a lawyer, Murray took on civil and women’s rights cases. Thurgood Marshall, then the NAACP’s chief counsel, called her 1950 book, States’ Laws on Race and Color, the “bible” of the civil rights movement. Murray taught law at Brandeis University (1968-1973), then in 1977, at age 67, she was the first African American woman ordained as a priest. She worked in a parish in Washington DC. until 1984. Murray died in 1985 of pancreatic cancer.
To the Oppressors
by Pauli Murray
.
Now you are strong
And we are but grapes aching with ripeness.
Crush us!
Squeeze from us all the brave life
Contained in these full skins.
But ours is a subtle strength
Potent with centuries of yearning,
Of being kegged and shut away
In dark forgotten places.
.
We shall endure
To steal your senses
In that lonely twilight
Of your winter’s grief.
.
“To the Oppressors from Dark Testament and Other Poems, © 1939 by the Pauli Murray Foundation – Liveright Publishing Corporation
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1950 – E. Ethelbert Miller born in the Bronx, NY; African-American poet, teacher, anthologist, and literary activist; author of two memoirs, co-editor of Poet Lore magazine, founder-director of the Ascension Poetry Reading Series in the Washington D.C. area, and host of the radio show On the Margin. He was a commissioner on the D.C. Commission on the Arts and Humanities (1997-2008). His many poetry collections include Andromeda; The Migrant Worker; Where Are the Love Poems for Dictators?: Whispers, Secrets and Promises; If God Invented Baseball; and How I Found Love Behind the Catcher’s Mask.
Billie Holiday
by E. Ethelbert Miller
.
sometimes the deaf
hear better than the blind
.
some men
when they first
heard her sing
.
were only attracted
to the flower in her hair
.
“Billie Holiday” from First Light: New and Selected Poems, © 1994 by Ethelbert Miller –Black Classic Press
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1984 – David A. Romero born in Fontana, CA, the son of working class Mexican-American parents, and raised in Diamond Bar, CA.. He is an American spoken word poet and activist against labor exploitation. He graduated from the University of Southern California in 2007 with a double major in Cinema-Television and Philosophy. His poems have appeared in many literary magazines and a number of anthologies. His poem "You Were Born a Tree" was sent to the Moon by NASA in 2025 as part of the Lunar Codex. His published poetry collections are Diamond Bars: The Street Version; Ellendale Night; and My Name is Romero.
Grandfather Tells Time
by David A. Romero
.
Grandfather
Baseball cap insignia, faded
Gray sweater, no hood
Blue jeans worn from use
Granddaughter
Puffy pink jacket
Bouncy hair and crayons
Grandfather tells time
Granddaughter eats her fries
“Finish your food
At one, we’ll go to the park
By two, we’ll be on our way to your Mom’s”
Grandfather tells time
Gray hairs cross his watch
Their time is short
He’ll have to drop her off.
Grandfather folds his arms
Son is doing time
He misses this time
So quickly, she grows
Grandfather takes time for Granddaughter
Maple leaves in wind
Granddaughter never wants their afternoon walks
Her evening bike rides to end
Sometimes Grandfather tries to tell her about Son
About his time
She never listens
She hums and rides on
104
Says, “Watch me”
So, Grandfather does.
Son never got enough time from Grandfather
So much pain before he left
Grandfather was quiet during the arraignment
Hugged Grandmother as Son was taken
It all seemed to last so long.
In the fast food restaurant
Grandfather wonders why
Why it was not enough to provide
To wake up each dark morning and work
For his family
As Great Grandfather had done
Great Grandfather’s sleep and silence in the evening
The silence of the open field
Within the cacophony of the worksite
Son never understood
That food was love
That working for your family was enough
Wasn’t it?
Grandfather wishes he had more time to think about it.
Granddaughter’s fries are done
So, Grandfather tells time
“Time to go to the park
Before I take you to your Mom’s”
Granddaughter wants to stay
Motions over at some noisy kids
A collection of brightly-colored plastic balls
105
Says she wants to play
So, Grandfather lets her
Granddaughter jumps in
Makes quick friends
Tells them all to grab a bunch of balls
And throw them into the air
Like an explosion
Like fireworks
Like a scattered pile of leaves
Grandfather doesn’t like this place
He feels out of place and contained
But he sits there in that plastic and metal chair
He takes time
He makes time
Looks at the time
Then pulls his sweater sleeve over his watch.
“Grandfather Tells Time” from MY NAME IS ROMERO, © 2020 by David A. Romero – FlowerSong Press
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November 21
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1952 – Debjani Chatterjee born in Delhi, India; Indian-born British poet, author, and translator. She came to the UK in 1972 after earning a BA from the American University in Cairo. She completed her education at English universities, earning a Ph.D. in English and American Literature from Lancaster University in 1977. She later served as director of the Sheffield Racial Equality Council (1984-1994). In 2012, she was an Olympic Torchbearer from Sheffield to Rotherham. Her poetry collections include I Was that Woman; The Sun Rises in the North; Albino Gecko; Do You Hear the Storm Sing?; and Laughing with Angels.
A Winter’s Morning in Timarpur
by Debjani Chatterjee
.
The black and white cat snoozes in the play of light and shade
on the carport’s tin roof, under the crumbling mango tree;
tail twitching, it dreams of plump pigeon and tender blue tit.
The scent of a hilsa fish curry floats from the kitchen window;
infiltrates its dream and teases it awake till it yawns and blinks.
A family of sparrows hop in the pomegranate tree:
twittering delight at the young green of its leaves,
playing among the orange of its buds.
Frenzied bees weave among white lemon flowers
and crimson frangipani fragrance the air.
High on a branch of the drumstick tree a tailor-bird’s nest swings
in the November breeze, fresh with a hint of henna coolness.
The coral-stemmed white shefali flowers make alpona patterns
as they fall on the dew-damp grass.
The hibiscus still droops in prayer
to the early morning sun, its double petals
luscious red like much-kissed bridal lips.
A squirrel mother and child stir in their telephone-box nest
and milkmen balance heavy canisters on bicycle bars.
The roadside chaiwalla lights his charcoal fire biri
and the newsboy flings, with practised ease,
a rolled Hindustan Times to the third floor verandah.
Trucks and buses piled with raw produce and day labour
thunder imperially down the Grand Trunk Road
from the conquered pastures of Punjab and Haryana.
The black and white cat shadow boxes a Tiger Swallowtail
as a sleepy corner of Old Delhi wakes – and stretches.
.
alpona: Bengali word for patterns drawn on the floor to welcome guests.
chaiwalla: someone who sells tea.
biri: a cheap Indian cigarette.
“A Winter’s Morning in Timarpur” from Namaskar: New and Selected Poems, © 2004 by Debyani Chatterjee – Redbeck Press
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1954 – Fiona Pitt-Kethley born in Edgeware, northwest London, UK; British poet, novelist, travel writer, anthology editor, and freelance journalist, who has written for The Daily Telegraph, The Independent, The Guardian, and The Times,. She now lives in Spain with her husband, chess grandmaster James Plaskett, and “some feral cats.” Her poetry collections include: Sky Ray Lolly; Private Parts; The Perfect Man; Dogs; Double Act; and Memo From a Muse.
The Anatolian Fertility Goddess
by Fiona Pitt-Kethley
.
Across the Golden Horn in Karakoy,
a maze of ancient, crooked, cobbled streets
contains the brothels of old Istanbul.
A vendor at the bottom of the hill
sells macho-hot green chilli sandwiches.
A cudgel-wielding policeman guards the gate.
.
One year, dressed as a man, I went inside
(women and drunks are not allowed in there).
I mingled with the mass of customers,
in shirt, grey trousers, heavy walking boots.
A thick tweed jacket flattened out my breasts.
A khaki forage cap concealed my hair.
.
The night was young, the queues at doors were short.
Far down the street a crowd of men stood round
and watched a woman dancing in a house.
Her sixty, sixty, sixty figure poured inside
a flesh-tone, skin-tight, Lycra leotard,
quivered like milk-jelly on a shaken plate.
.
I’ve seen her type before in small museums –
primeval blobs of roughly sculpted stone –
the earliest form of goddess known to man.
.
“The Anatolian Fertility Goddess” from Selected Poems, © 2008 by Fiona Pitt-Kethley – Salt Publishing
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November 22
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1922 – Maureen Cannon born in the Bronx, NY; prolific American poet of light verse; her father was an editor and theatre critic at The New York Journal-American. She earned a BA in English from Barnard College, and was writing poetry as a young mother, but didn’t submit any poems for publication until she was in her 40s. She went on to become a regular contributor to The New York Times, Good Housekeeping, Ladies’ Home Journal, Light Quarterly, and Reader’s Digest. Over 1,000 of her short verses appeared in print during her lifetime. She died at age 84 in January 2007.
Politician in the Pew
by Maureen Cannon
.
His very public piety
Achieved such notoriety
That, just as he’d suspected,
In time he was elected.
.
Accomplishing his purpose thus,
He grew less sanctimonious
Until, a private citizen
Once more, he breathed his last ‘amen’
And—never went to church again.
.
“Politician in the Pew,” © 2004 by Maureen Cannon, appeared in Light Quarterly in 2004
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1953 – Marly Youmans born in Aiken, South Carolina, but her family moved to other places in the South, including New Orleans, where she learned some Cajun French; American poet, novelist, short story writer, and essayist who currently lives in New York. She has written five collections of poetry, eight novels, and two novels for young adults. Her novel The Wolf Pit won the 2001 Michael Shaara Award for Excellence in Civil War Fiction. Her poetry collections include The Throne of Psyche; The Foliate Head; and The Book of the Red King.
Otherworlds
by Marly Youmans
.
Physicists go trailing after poets:
Dante saying distanced things may show it’s
.
Just one space they share in Paradiso;
How the strings of harpsichords could be so
.
Entangled with some hyacinths (a world
Away) that unexpected fragrance curled
.
Into George MacDonald’s sitting room
And tinged his Lilith’s page with its perfume…
.
Since thinnest places are a fragile screen,
Inspect the mounds where fairy folk were seen,
.
Mull the spirit kingdoms of the muses
And sluice of silver rain no bard refuses,
.
Weigh the way, the cost of sacrifice,
The radiance, the shores of Paradise.
.
“Otherworlds” appeared in the Amethyst Review, June 5, 2022 edition
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G’Morning/Afternoon/Evening MOTlies!
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